Doctor Indisposed
by elfmaiden4legs
Summary: ****Read and you will see why I decided to put this in the 'Doctor Who' section instead of 'Torchwood', although it does assume that you have a vague prior knowledge of 'Children of Earth' before reading. Everybody thought that the Doctor had abandoned them the day the 456 invaded earth, but the truth is strange, and John Frobisher is not the man he appears to be!


**Doctor Indisposed**

John Frobisher slowly approached the tank before him, straining his eyes to try and catch a glimpse of the strange alien life form known only to them as the 456. Fear made his blood run cold – it was perfectly natural to be fearful of the unknown, he understood that, but this was something more – for at the same time as a strange sense of curiosity overcame him, which he could neither explain nor understand, he'd felt a faint flicker of recognition in the deep recesses of his mind.

He'd always had an unusual, almost obsessive, fascination with the mysteries and many complexities of the solar system. For as long as he could remember he'd been haunted by unsettling dreams of a planet burning – one vastly different from his own – its people wiped out by a nefarious alien race he used to call Dalek's, and the same cold shiver which had struck him upon waking from this terrifying nightmare had caressed his spine again upon first hearing mention of the name 456 – turning his blood to ice inside his veins. It was as though he'd instinctively known that they were to be instantly feared, not just because they wanted the children but because he'd somehow known that the devastation they were capable of unleashing upon this world could be catastrophic. He knew because John Frobisher had the inescapable feeling that he'd seen it happen before.

How the man knew any of this however was a complete mystery, even to him. Talk amongst his colleagues of an illusive man known to them all only as the Doctor had given fruit to a terrifying flashback – jumbled images, and a tsunami of information had flooded his mind, causing an explosion of disjointed thoughts – and he'd felt in that moment as though somebody had just walked over his grave. He'd heard that name before, but where and when he could not recall, although it all seemed like a very long time ago.

What nobody could have realised however, not even the man himself, was that John Frobisher didn't really exist, and that the reason the Doctor could do nothing to help them on that day was that he was already amongst them. If anyone had bothered to delve deeper into the man's credentials they'd have discovered that the paper trail only led them so far before almost completely disintegrating – there was no birth certificate for the man, no record of his passport application despite the fact that he had one, no marriage certificate, and no birth certificates in existence for either of his two children. Everything about John Frobisher up until this moment – every thought, every emotion, every false memory – was a lie, and his family were nothing more than an illusion – a psychic projection from a Time Lord's mind. For the Doctor – at least the twelfth incarnation of the Time Lord – was trapped in a self-imposed memory loop, stranded on Earth outside of his own time. His only insurance against him coming into contact with any of his former or current selves had backfired, and he could no longer remember anything about who he really was, nor his life before John Frobisher.

It was the Doctor who slowly approached the tank before him, straining his eyes to try and catch a glimpse of the strange alien life form known to humanity as the 456. His fingers trembled slightly and fear made his blood run cold, but he struggled to override his instincts as he felt a faint flicker of recognition in the recesses of his mind – before the shadows of his past suddenly faded, like a candle snuffed out by a gentle puff of breeze – and the Doctor became John Frobisher once more.

He reverted back to his human identity, and whilst there were those who lost their faith in the Doctor that day little did any of them realise just how close the Time Lord had actually come to touching all of their lives – for it was he who took the full responsibility for the 456 upon his shoulders, and he who was eventually appointed the unofficial mediator between the invading alien life form and the human race. Whilst he may have been powerless to help he had by no means abandoned them, and was experiencing all of the same pain and suffering as they. The Doctor that day was, of course, hurting too.


End file.
